Synopsis
The time of the Demon, your Demon, is drawing close... very close...
Random people are terrorized by a malevolent man who brings their worst fears to life.
1979 Directed by Percival Rubens
Random people are terrorized by a malevolent man who brings their worst fears to life.
Midnight Caller, Night Demon, The Demon - Der Teuflische, The Demon's Nightmare - Il ritorno
Horror, the undead and monster classics Thrillers and murder mysteries Intense violence and sexual transgression Gothic and eerie haunting horror Gory, gruesome, and slasher horror Terrifying, haunted, and supernatural horror Chilling experiments and classic monster horror Sci-fi horror, creatures, and aliens Show All…
A fun little s̶l̶a̶s̶h̶e̶r̶ strangler flick from South-Africa.
It is obvious that this was inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween, but instead of The Shape we get a fairly nondescript tall guy who likes to strangle people for.. reasons? Cameron Mitchell appears for a short while as a psychic trying to find out the identity of the murderer. There is a distinct moment in this where I feel a producer must have bemoaned the lack of nudity, because from that point forward most of the women are in a state of undress.
This had such a great opening that I was convinced I'd stumbled onto a true gem and would have another top slasher to add to my faves. But boy did that middle third bring it down, it became more soppy crap. I'm still giving it a fairly decent score though as those final amazing 20 minutes made up for it somewhat.
A solid example of why I wouldn't skip a movie based solely on its average letterboxd score. One man's trash as the saying goes... Well, The Demon isn't quite a treasure for me but it's hard not to like a Halloween ripoff that gives us a killer with a clawed glove, Cameron Mitchell having an ESP fit while sniffing a pillow, and a topless final chase. Plus, Boobs Disco which, sadly, was just a normal disco on the inside.
I don't know much about the production history of The Demon but it sure feels like they started making a movie about a psychic trying to track down a kidnapped girl, then pivoted and turned it into a Halloween ripoff when…
What if you made Halloween in apartheid South Africa but with 1/8th of the talent?
Basic mess of a knockoff slasher but with more strangulation and an awful Cameron Mitchell. Seriously that guy is a hammy hack.
At one point the women all start going nude, like they forgot!
Starts strong then taps the brakes pretty hard. Rallies for an almost ending.
Film #145 of 2024.
The best part about this movie is the movie poster here on Letterboxd. It started with some promise and then quickly disintegrates into a heaping mess and waste of film. Even the nudity felt awkward, voyeuristic and out of place. I have this on a 50 horror movie dvd boxed set, that should have given me an idea of what I was in for.
Scary Nights Festival 2023
08.08.2023 - 01.11.2023
Erstsichtung als DVD | Mediabook | Super Spooky Stories Edition | WMM | Cover A | No. 056/111 | Limited Edition
The time of the Demon, your Demon, is drawing close...very close...
Ein maskierter Killer geht um und versetzt eine amerikanische Stadt in Furcht und Schrecken. Er trägt eine Krallenhand und erstickt seine Opfer mit einer Plastiktüte. Die junge Emily wird von ihm entführt. Die Eltern wenden sich hilfesuchend an den ESP-Ermittler Bill Carson (Cameron Mitchell - CALIFORNIA COPS, 1987) der den Mörder ausfindig machen soll. Als der Vater von Emily auf eigene Faust loszieht, um den Killer zu stellen, hat das fatale Folgen für alle Beteiligten...
Gerne grabe ich mich auch durch die…
The film Halloween could have been if John Carpenter ....lived in South Africa...hung out at a place called 'boobs disco'...couldn't get Donald Pleasence and had to make do with Cameron Mitchell...was able to persuade Jamie Lee Curtis to do a gratuitous nude scene...had a deep rooted hatred of psychic investigators...had little talent...and was called Percival.
A forgotten gem of the post Halloween pre Friday the 13th era of slasher films. The Wild West for the genre when the formula hadn’t completely solidified yet. It seems maligned by many possibly due to bad vhs transfers on 50 movie packs. It’s something that could be ripe for rediscovery with a new blu ray restoration.
I had it strongly recommended to me by one of my favorite podcasts, Hello! This is the Doomed Show, and found a reasonably priced copy of the VCI dvd on eBay. It has the vibe and feel of another 70s grindhouse style slasher, the Toolbox Murders, also starring our beloved Cameron Mitchell. It’s also clearly inspired by Halloween’s faceless boogeyman taking the unstoppable…
Weirdness abounds.
And not just in the plot and dialogue. Just the way it looks onscreen, with its jarring colour and fuzzy focus reminds me of 70’s porn (and I mean porn made in the 1970s. NOT geriatric perviness... 😦).
The best thing about this movie is the poster. I don't know what this was even about, it starts off with Cameron Mitchell as a psychic trying to find a kidnapped girl until it decides to become a Halloween ripoff and writes Mitchell out of the movie.
The killer has a razor glove which is kinda cool and there's a place called Boobs Disco. The main problem with this movie is that its hard to see anything in the night scenes so when the killer kills someone you can't even see what's happening. I'm also unsure that this guy is a demon.
Overall The Demon is a pretty bad slasher. The only thing saving it is Cameron Mitchell's death scene. Other than that you can probably skip this and you won't miss anything.
Watch here: youtu.be/zML5xR-PSLk?si=strJqR_UITYZmhxR
Those 50 movie horror packs seem like a great deal on paper. Its when you actually try to watch the fucking things that regret comes into play. This was probably always a shitty looking movie but this transfer is just unbelievably dark as in their is barely anything going on the screen at times.
The plot (there's not much) concerns a "demon" prowling around strangling people with plastic bags. Cameron Mitchell plays a psychic who tries to get to the bottom of it but he's not really in the movie that much. "The Demon" overall lacks a clear protagonist and as a result doesn't even particularly feel like a slasher.
Really this movie is only interesting in how "off' everything…
I didn't get this film.
The plot didn't hold up, it was too random to provide a movie length story, and the one thing it did not have was a stinkin' Demon! Former Marine turned psychic detective for no reason? Got that! Rich boy who has mommy issues? Yeah, throw him in there too! Wait... we need a great mustache! Bingo! Done! Oh shit, did we forget an actual demon? Let's just make the bad guy really tall and give him a glove, the kids'll dig that.... No? BOOBS! That solves it....
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